When hospice reverts to the lowest common denominator and leaders obsess about metrics, it's time to speak. Self-inflated leaders assume clinicians give until their backs break, given no raises for years. A clinical ladder is a rainbow’s pot of gold. Others have a sorrier job and must be motivated by money. Abysmal leaders dangle extrinsic rewards for admission, hiring and EDBITA targets. “Sign on” bonuses entice people into a poor work environment. Employees’ voice equals their raise, zero.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Thank you for your back porch update and reminiscing about your experiences with new corporate owners. We're still learning what Kindred is about. Unfortunately, communication seems no better than before. My method of listening to quarterly earnings calls for executive strategy didn't work so well with Kindred.

Hospice was but a minor part of the conversation. The language sounded something like, "hospice volumes are stabilizing, even making slight headway in Q1. The company is positioning hospice for a return to sequential growth."

During the three months ended March 31, 2015, the Company recorded an asset impairment charge of $6.7 million related to previously acquired home health and hospice trade names after the decision in the first quarter of 2015 to rebrand to the Kindred at Home trade name.

Later on in the same document:

During the three months ended March 31, 2015, the Company recorded an asset impairment charge of $7 million related to previously acquired home health and hospice trade names after the decision in the first quarter of 2015 to rebrand to the Kindred at Home trade name.

What's $300,000 between corporate friends? This could be a typo or an accounting discrepancy. With executive communications it's hard to know. It's newsworthy to Gentiva sites who've had their assets impaired by past trade name changes, some multiple times.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Retirement is great. Every now and then a bad memory of a former Generic Hospice buyout invades my brain as I sit on back porch sipping mint juleps. There are flashes of false promises, vacuous language, image obsessed people in suits and a widespread, shallow excitement over all the money the company would save or make under the new combination. This dull energy, like excrement, urine and water, flows downhill. Our site was to spend less and make more for the company. Customer needs, service levels and employee concerns (heaven forbid) were not in the equation.

What did we get? A ceaseless rotation of corporate "leaders" who were supposed to support our site. They delivered handcuffs in the form of "no overtime" and other absurd corporate edicts The amount of work to be done didn't matter. We had staff doing the work of 2.5 full timers. There was no concern of burnout for loyal, dedicated employees. Our abusive branch manager was a hero for getting this level of productivity. They were lionized in the company's eyes when they should have been vilified.

After one buyout, the new company wanted to hear from employees. Corporate sent a human resources person to gauge the pulse of our site under our horrific branch manager. They heard from most people, directly in one-on-one sessions. The line of people shared their individual stories of how this leader had dashed our site's historically low turnover and high employee morale, achieving soaring turnover and plummeting morale. After processing this feedback Human Resources invited anyone who didn't like it to leave.

Six months later they administered an anonymous employee survey. If they didn't care about our plight when informed directly by dozens of loyal, dedicated employees what difference would a survey make? A few new employees penciled in their rankings on a variety of measures. Most of the rest of us trashed it, just as the company had trashed our verbally shared concerns.

I scribbled comments on each question, ignoring the rankings. I simply edited the survey based on my experience. In my attempt to recreate a few of those I offer:

My colleagues support one another in spite of local and executive management.My branch manager creates unnecessary conflictMy branch manager serially picks people for micromanagement and abuseHuman Resources aids our branch manager's abusive counselingMy colleagues are chronically underpaid and not appreciated.Senior management has never visited our site.

Good luck with the survey. Enjoy the honeymoon while it lasts. When the union settles in Kindred's true face will be revealed.